For the Record: Wargaming Inside Info – a Blast from the Past

Hello everyone, remember the guy with the Wargaming inside info (that got confirmed in time, for example the Freedom Bundle for Xbox)? He’s back. This time, he said he’d have to be more careful – the developers were not happy about some of the info being leaked and started purging the internal channels. So, we’ll have a look at some of the older stuff, that was planned and never got into the game, perhaps it will be illuminating for you guys. I will add some of my comments in the usual way. Multi-turret and Multi-Gun Mechanism Multiturret and multigun mechanisms have been alphatested several times already, the developers however are not convinced that the mechanism is of any use and should be developed further. Most of the secondary weapons are pretty much useless (such as the Maus gun) for their tiers, so it’s most likely the project was shelved completely due to the “what is the point of developing something that players will never use anyway” reason. One of the few exceptions would be the B1 hull gun. This is how the reload mechanism was planned/tested by the developers: there is a button, switching between available guns/turrets, each has its own loading time, so for example by pressing the right key on M3 Lee, the GUI switches, it is noticeable because the camera switches a bit as well and centers over the active gun (for example it switches above the 37mm turret). The concept worked, but had following issues: - poor gun performance: the extra guns are almost always worse than the original guns of the tank and in most cases would be completely useless, providing “extra annoyance” only to the target. It was also mentioned it would confuse the players, who would then either switch to the wrong gun because it was “firing faster” or would simply be confused by the concept of more guns itself. Additionally, the rapid fire guns could be abused for permatracking in some cases. - gameplay: there are issues with the concept, such as “how would the aiming work”, “would the gun be pre-aimed when switching”, “what about spamming the switch between reloads” etc. – the developers specifically don’t want the game to become a DPM race á la World of Warcraft, where in order to maximize DPM, you have to mash a skill every second (SS: I can confirm that, maximizing the DPS patterns was sometimes really exhausting to the point the paladin had a mod that told you what skill to press next to maximize your DPM) All this happened basically as early as 2012 and the feature was shelved ever since. There are some tanks on the developer list that are basically “frozen” because of waiting for this feature, such as the Soviet T-35, T-100 and the French pre-war heavy tanks. These will not appear in World of Tanks until (if at all) the mechanism gets implemented. A few more bits of info - the developers thought about adding or reworking a form of ST-I, called ST-II, that had twin guns, but then it was decided that the current ST-I works just fine and is balanced - originally, the IS-4 was supposed to use its historical gun only, which was the D-25T, SerB wanted this gun firing gold ammo as silver and some even more advanced ammunition as gold along with better soft stats, but it didn’t work for tier 10 - at one point (SS: very long time ago), IS-7 was considered a mistake because the design was “too powerful”, the developers even considered replacing it, but in the end, the vehicle was too popular and so they did let it be - however, developers are considering replacing tanks that are unhistorical and aren’t TOO popular (this is not the case of WT E-100, as it is very popular, but the FV4202 and FV215b (120) are prime candidates for this) - British tank Archer (with a 17pdr) is intended for the second line of British TD’s or it might come as a premium, the tank is apparently supposed to be driven the was Crusader artillery is, it has “low priority”, but the Crusader SP “driving fast backwards” system was a success and so this tank is scheduled for implementation with it - no BMP’s and flame tanks in WoT - the Sturmtiger model is already done, but the developers for three reasons: “too big issues with balance”, “there are better things to implement” and “wait for its branch” - Churchill AVRE could appear in World of Tanks as a part of an “assault branch”, but suffers the same fate as Sturmtiger (same reasons why it is not implemented) (SS: this might require an explanation – some time ago, probably a year and half back, the developers were considering an entirely new class of vehicles – “heavy assault guns”. No new info appeared on that ever since, so it’s likely the idea was scrapped in the concept stage and kinda “took” the Sturmtiger and the Churchill AVRE with it) - some developers want the Italians to have a separate tree, but they lack hightier tanks (SS: that is true, Czechoslovakia itself for example has more hightier stuff than Italy, Italian hightiers are extremely problematic, Italy can barely build a complete medium branch – and hightiers would be either some sort of Leopard models, or modified M47 Patton) - developers considered at some point minibranches of Israeli, Brazilian and Argentine tanks, the idea was considered interesting but there was a lack of high tiers and the Israli branch was considered “compromised by foreign designs” (SS: as in, full of copies) - Japanese superheavy designs are still being researched, but there is very little data to go, WG might fill the branch gaps “as they see fit” Oh yea and apparently, there will be a Alienware bonus code giveaway (bonus, not invite) soon